ARU CEO John O'Neill announces his resignation during a press conference at the Australian Rugby Union headquarters. Picture: Brett Costello. Source: The Daily Telegraph

FOR years, John O'Neill proudly carried around in his wallet a cutting outlining how he'd won a defamation case against critic Alan Jones, who had called him a "failed banker" not suited to running rugby.

When O'Neill resigned yesterday he had racked up a total of 14 years as Australia's rugby supremo.

By any measure, he has overseen dramatic change for the code in a dramatic era and been the right man at the right time far more often than not.

Paying the power bill at ARU headquarters in Sydney was a tough-enough ask when he took the helm in 1995 for the move to professionalism.

He pulled off Australia's stellar hosting of the 2003 World Cup, the footprint of Super Rugby has risen to five teams on his watch and he has been this country's most influential rugby administrator on the world stage.

At times, he has sparred with, infuriated and worked harmoniously with our Kiwi cousins. Some still don't forgive him for boldly going it alone on the 2003 Cup hosting when the Kiwis bungled their end of it.

Most of all, he will be remembered for thinking big by audaciously raiding and ruffling rugby league when a decade ago the ARU's mission was to challenge for No.1 winter footy code.

It is unlikely any other rugby administrator would have gone on open war footing with league by orchestrating the calculated poaching of Wendell Sailor, Mat Rogers and Lote Tuqiri.

"They would be great entertainment factors for our game, widen appeal and serve a strategic purpose in showing that union was still on the move," O'Neill explained in his 2007 autobiography, It's Only A Game.

"When the attack on rugby league was launched, it was part of an approved ARU board policy."

O'Neill floated an even grander suggestion - a grant from the International Rugby Board so Australian rugby could buy all of league's best players and kill off the rival code by meshing the two codes as one again.

The IRB quickly shot that one down.

Sailor, Tuqiri and Rogers played 149 Tests between them, scored plenty of tries, won Tests, packed plenty of headline power and also mired themselves in episodes of misbehaviour.

Later, O'Neill would summarise: "There are upsides in all they did but some of that upside is severely diminished by the manner of their exits."

Certainly, O'Neill's first face-to-face meeting with Sailor in 2002 was unique across the years.

"G'day, Jonny," O'Neill recalled of Sailor's greeting in his book.

The Australian Rugby Championship, brought into being by chief executive Gary Flowers for the 2007 season, flushed out future Test players like Luke Burgess and Nick Cummins in a second-tier competition the code had been craving.

O'Neill chopped it after a single season rather than pursue a more cost-effective model and it is criticism he must live with.

The O'Neill view being the only view was a source of resentment from several corners of Australian rugby.

O'Neill was a rugby boss but also an ardent rugby lover who treasured the traditions and culture of the Wallabies.

He loved a winning dressing room and it is a true story that he gave the current Wallabies a dressing room rev in Auckland in August when he felt coach Robbie Deans did not after a heavy loss to the All Blacks

In the heady days from 1998-2001, the Wallabies enjoyed a golden era. That meant a full trophy cabinet bursting with World Cup, Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations silverware as well as other crystal and silver baubles.

O'Neill was in his pomp during this time. The 1999 World Cup-winners were on a $15,000 bonus per man.

O'Neill doubled it, almost on the wave of a hand.

He was hands-on. When there were doubts about John Eales's suitability to captain the Wallabies in 1997, O'Neill talked it out over a round of golf on the Gold Coast and found out just how dedicated he was to doing it well.

He grew into one of the great Wallaby captains.

O'Neill always had far more substance than wannabes like Dilip Kumar, a former ARU director and one-time NSW Rugby Unionm Chairman with misjudged ambitions of grandeur. O'Neill played rugby politics but was a victim himself when his contract was not renewed after the 2003 World Cup.

His second tenure from 2007-12 has been tougher going. The ARU's financial position has been improved and the old zeal was there when he thought he had signed the guru to guide Australian rugby back to the top, the Kiwi Robbie Deans.

Inconsistent Test results have tripped up that lofty ideal.

O'Neill will still leave the code with a legacy as one of rugby's finest administrators and as a man who always had the Wallabies foremost in his thinking.

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